History 309-01
The History of American Radicalism
Prof. Seth Cotlar
Office: ETN 103
Phone: 370-6297
E-mail: scotlar@willamette.edu
Office Hours: Monday 3:00-4:00 and Friday 1:30-3:00
Course Description: This course will provide students with a general, though selective, overview of the history of egalitarian radicalism in America from the revolutionary era to the end of the 1960s. Topics to be covered include popular insurgency in the revolutionary era, working class radicalism in the ante-bellum era, abolitionism, the nineteenth-century womanÕs rights movement, labor radicalism in the age of industrial capitalism, the nature and impact of Communism in pre WWII America, and the rise of the civil rights movement and the New Left in the 1950s and 1960s. Students will engage with a wide range of primary and secondary sources which illuminate the different, intertwining strands of American radical thought, the historical moments when progressive ideas gained more or less widespread acceptance, the interaction between radical movements and state authority, the interplay between international politics and American activism, and the conflicts within and between American social movements.
Teaching Method: Discussion with occasional short lectures to provide context.
Attendance Policy: Because this class will be run as a seminar (i.e. you canÕt just Òget the notesÓ from a fellow student), attendance is of vital importance. Three absences (for whatever reason) will be forgiven, but each subsequent absence will result in a reduction of the class participation grade.
Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on the basis of:
¥Participation in the class blog (including 500 word
self assessment of oneÕs contributions to the blog due via e-mail by 5pm on
Dec. 7)—20%
¥Contributions to classroom
conversation—20%
¥Paper 1 (1500
words)—15%
¥Paper 2 (1500
words)—15%
¥Final, synthetic essay
(3000 words)—30%
Explanation
of the blog—A central component of
this class will be a blog to which every member of the class will
contribute. The blog can be found
at http://blog.willamette.edu/people/scotlar/hist309/
and you should check it frequently to keep up with the new entries and
comments. This evolving text will
serve as a permanent and public record of your collective engagement with the
course materials and each other. Over
the course of the semester each student is expected to contribute at least
seven substantial entries of at least 300 words. A good post will develop one or two ideas that emerge out of
your engagement with the readings primarily, but they can also reference class
discussions or materials from outside the class as well. A good post may also end with a
provocative, open-ended question intended to stimulate further discussion of an
issue. Each student is also
expected to contribute at least fifteen comments of at least 100 words in
response to the ideas contributed to the blog. You can agree with and elaborate
upon an idea or a question someone has posted, or you can respectfully disagree
and explain the basis for your disagreement. At the end of the semester you will submit a brief
self-evaluation of your contributions to the blog.
Plagiarism Policy: Students are expected to do their own work and to provide proper attribution when using someone elseÕs words or ideas. The instructor will rigorously enforce WillametteÕs policy regarding academic dishonesty.
Required Books: (All books listed below can be purchased at the Willamette University Bookstore)
Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy
John
Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men
Vivian Gornick, The Solitude of Self
Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs
Van Gosse, Rethinking
the New Left
All of the other class readings are either on electronic reserve at the library (R) or are available in journals to which the library has electronic access (Library). Students are expected to obtain copies of those readings well ahead of time in case of unforeseen complications. I highly recommend you get a three ring binder to keep all of the reserve readings organized. [Note: each reserve reading is listed under the authorÕs name and a shortened title, i.e. Zinn—Radical History.]
Daily Schedule of Topics and Reading Assignments
T Aug 28—Introduction
to the class. Discussion of Allen
Ginsberg, America (1956).
Unit 1: Democracy and Capitalism
in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary Era.
Th Aug 30—Writing a
Radical History of the American Revolution.
Reading:
1) Howard Zinn, ÒWhat is Radical History?,Ó in The
Politics of History (1970),
35-55. (R)
2) Terry Bouton, Taming
Democracy, 3-58
T Sept. 4—The People
and the Elites in the American Revolution
Reading:
1) Bouton, 61-144
Th Sept. 6—The
radicalism of the crowd in the Revolutionary era
Reading:
1) Bouton, 145-67
2) Barbara Clark Smith, "Food Rioters and the
American Revolution,Ó William and Mary Quarterly 51 (1994), 3-38. (Library)
T Sept. 11—Containing
the revolution.
Reading:
1) Bouton, 171-243
Th Sept. 13—Democratic visions of economic life
in the late eighteenth century
Reading:
1) Bouton, 244-65 (skim 244-56)
2) Excerpts from William Manning, "The Key of
Libberty" (1798) (R)
3) Excerpts from Thomas Paine, Rights of Man Part
2 (1792) and Agrarian Justice (1797) (R)
T Sept. 18—The market revolution and the
shifting relationship between democracy and capitalism in the early 19th
century.
Reading:
1) Bruce Laurie, Artisans to Workers, 15-73. (R)
TH Sept. 20—Voices from the first wave of
American labor radicalism
Reading:
1) Excerpts from Cornelius
Blatchly, An Essay on Common Wealth
(1822) (R)
2) Robert Owen, First
Discourse on a New System of Society
(1825) (R)
3) Thomas Skidmore, The
Rights of Man to Property (1829),
3-15, 355-390 (R)
4) Seth Luther, "Ten Hour Circular" (1835).
http://www.oberlin.edu/history/GJK/H258S2000/TenHourCirc.html
Unit 2: Abolitionism, WomenÕs
Rights, and Socialism—The Varieties of Nineteenth Century American
Radicalism.
T Sept. 25—Paper #1 due in class. Lecture on the origins and evolution of abolitionism
Th Sept. 27---The Emergence of the Radical
Abolitionist movement in the 1850s
Reading:
1) John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men, 1-70
T Oct. 2—The Making of Radical Abolitionist
Identities
Reading:
1) Stauffer, 71-133
2) Mia Bay, ÒAbolition and the Color Line,Ó American
Quarterly, v. 55, n. 1, (March
2003), 103-112. (Library)
Th Oct. 4—Abolitionism and the question of
means
Reading:
1) Stauffer, 134-207
T Oct. 9—The End Game of Abolitionism and the
Origins of the Civil War
Reading:
1) Stauffer, 208-86
Th Oct. 11—The Roots of the WomanÕs Suffrage
Movement
Reading:
1) Vivian Gornick, The Solitude of Self, 3-28.
2) Judith Wellman, ÒThe Road to Seneca Falls: A Study in Social Networks,Ó Journal of WomenÕs History 3 (Spring 1991), 9-37. (Library)
T Oct. 16—Assessing Elizabeth Cady StantonÕs Radicalism.
Reading:
1) Gornick, 29-132.
2) Martha Nussbaum, ÒIn a Lonely Place,Ó The Nation, 9 February 2006, accessible at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/nussbaum
TH Oct. 18—Debating the nature of nineteenth-century working-class radicalism.
Reading:
1) Sean
Wilentz, "Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness and the American
Labor Movement, 1790-1920" with reply by Nick Salvatore, International
Labor and Working Class History, 26 (1984):
1-30. (R)
2) Nick Salvatore, Eugene Debs, xi-xiii, 1-22.
T Oct. 23—DebsÕ early radicalism vs. late nineteenth century Anarchism.
Reading:
1) Salvatore, 23-113
2) ÒManifesto of the International Working PeopleÕs Association (1883)Ó and excerpts of speeches from the Chicago Anarchist Trial (1886), in Fried, Socialism in America, 208-212, 221-229. (R) See http://www.chicagohistory.org/hadc/intro.html for a brief summary of the Haymarket Affair and to access a wide range of other primary documents connected to it.
Th Oct. 25—The expansion of industrial capitalism and the making of a Socialist in late nineteenth-century America.
Reading:
1) Salvatore, 114-177 (skim 137-46)
T Oct. 30—The golden years of American Socialism.
Reading:
1) Salvatore, 179-261
Th Nov. 1—The Socialist PartyÕs decline and legacy.
Reading:
1) Salvatore,
262-345 (skim 272-88 and 317-28)
Unit 3: Twentieth Century American Radicalism—A
departure or a continuation?
(Note: during this unit you
will be responsible for seeing and blogging about one historical documentary
that will serve as a supplement to the assigned reading. You can chose from three different
documentaries listed below: Nov. 27, Nov. 29, and Dec. 4.)
T Nov. 6—Paper due on nineteenth century
American radicalism. View The Wobblies (1979) in class.
TH Nov. 8—The Culture of early 20th
Century Radicalism.
Reading:
1) John Graham, ed., Yours for the
Revolution: The Appeal to Reason, 1895-1922
(1990), 1-16, 66-68, 173-213. (R)
2) Excerpts
from from Joyce L. Kornbluh, ed., Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology (1988). (R)
T Nov. 13— Debating the Historical Meaning and
Significance of American Communism
Reading:
1) Robin D. G. Kelley, "Comrades, Praise Gawd
for Lenin and Them!": Ideology and Culture among Black Communists in
Alabama, 1930-1935," Science and Society 52/1 (Spring 1988): 59-82. (R)
2) John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, "The
Historiography of American Communism: An Unsettled Field," Labour
History Review 68.1 (April 2003),
61-78. (Library)
3) Ellen Schrecker, "The Right's Cold War
Revision," The Nation V. 271
no. 4 (July 24, 2000), 22-24. (distributed
via e-mail)
4) View Seeing Red (1984) sometime before class. (I will arrange a screening time.)
Th Nov. 15—An American Communist tells her own
story.
Reading:
1) Dorothy Ray Healey and Maurice Isserman, California
Red: A Life in the American Communist Party, 15-61, 69-75, 114-32. (R)
T Nov. 20—The New Left emerges from the ashes
of the Old.
Reading:
1) Van Gosse, Rethinking the New Left, 1-29
2) Excerpts from The Port Huron Statement (1962).
(e-mail)
Th Nov. 22--Thanksgiving
T Nov. 27— Debating
the Civil Rights Movement
**Blog comments due from
those who viewed Freedom on my Mind
1) Gosse, 31-52 (skim for
background),
2) Charles Payne, "The
View from the Trenches," (1998), 99-136. (R)
3) Steven Lawson, "The
View from the Nation," (1998), 3-42. (R)
Th Nov. 29—The multifaceted movements of the
1960s.
**Blog comments due from
those who viewed Berkeley in the Sixties
Reading:
1) Gosse, 53-109
T Dec. 4—The radical phase of the 1960s.
**Blog comments due from
those who viewed The Weather Underground
Reading:
1) Gosse, 111-85
Th. Dec. 6—The legacy of the sixties, and where
do we go from here?
Reading:
1) Gosse, 187-210
2) Curtis White, ÒThe Idols of EnvironmentalismÓ and
ÒThe Ecology of Work,Ó in Orion,
(March/April 2007), accessible online at http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/233/
(Note: be sure to click through
to part 2 of the article)
Self-Assessment of Blog Participation due via
e-mail by 5pm on December 7.
Final synthetic essay (3000 words) due Thursday
December 13 by 5pm.
Some questions you may be
asked to respond to in this essay:
1) All of the radical movements weÕve studied this semester described themselves as advocates of a more democratic America. (Indeed, even the arguably least "democratic" of them, the Communists, advocated Òdemocratic centralism.Ó) Write an essay that traces the continuities and discontinuities in America's evolving tradition of democratic radicalism. Your essay should cover the full chronological range of the course and provide a close analysis of at least four different movements. Brief or extended discussions of or comparisons to movements other than these four are also encouraged. Aside from examining the differences and similarities between these movements, your essay should also address the relationship between this radical democratic tradition and the more mainstream conception of democracy that these radicals were contesting. Put another way, almost all Americans have considered themselves "democrats," but what set the forms of democracy advocated by radicals apart from those embraced by their less radical contemporaries?
2) It could be plausibly argued that every radical movement we've studied failed to realize its goals. Some would argue that this indicates that radicalism has been a fairly unimportant feature of American history. How would you respond to this charge? What, if any, impact have radicals had on American history? As with the previous prompt, you should closely examine at least four movements and bring in others in a more cursory form when they become relevant.
3) ÒFrom the very moment of
the nationÕs founding, the vast majority of ordinary Americans have been avid
and aspiring capitalists. Because
capitalist values lay at the heart of AmericaÕs political culture, the
occasional outbursts of radical political agitation in the nationÕs history
have generally come from outsiders who have had very little impact on the main
currents of American life.Ó Do you
agree with this quote? Why or why
not?